The UC Davis Cluster on Language Research is pleased to announce the Fifth Annual UC Davis Symposium on Language Research. The purpose of this symposium is to showcase current investigations on language, and to cultivate a community of language researchers throughout the country. We welcome a wide array of topics across all languages and disciplines related to linguistics, as it is our goal to create an open and inclusive symposium to promote dialogue between all types of language research.

Eligibility: All graduate and undergraduate students, lecturers, postdoctoral and visiting scholars currently investigating language in some capacity are encouraged to submit their research, preliminary or otherwise.

Submission deadline: March 30th, 2018

If you are interested in presenting, please submit an abstract of no more than 300 words in .pdf format to this Google form. Do not include any identifying information in your abstract or file name. In the Google form please include your name, academic affiliation, degree objective, title of the paper, and whether you wish to present an individual presentation or in a panel. Panels are limited to 3 presentations. If you wish to present as a panel, please submit all three abstracts together in one Google form submission, with a brief justification as to why they form a cohesive panel. Each presentation is limited to 15 minutes, plus an additional five minutes for questions.

Each abstract, unless requested otherwise, will be considered for the Award for Most Innovative Research. In order to receive award consideration, you must be currently enrolled at a postsecondary institution and submit your abstract by March 30th, 2018.

CLAUSE (Canadian Linguistics Annual Undergraduate Conference) is a conference for undergraduate research ran by the Society of Linguistic Undergraduates of McGill (SLUM) and the Concordia Linguistics Student Association (LSA).

Any current undergraduate student who is completing/has completed original research in linguistics and related fields (psycholinguistics, speech pathology, computational linguistics, sociolinguistics, etc.) is encouraged to submit, as are recent graduates who completed research while completing their degree. We are emailing in the case that students at the University would be interested in attending or presenting their work.

Although we are based in Montreal, we do have a few presenters travelling every year. It’s a wonderful opportunity to network, learn about academic research and what conferences are typically like, and to broaden your knowledge of the field. Presenting your work to peers is a valuable skill if you plan on continuing in research, and a large part of our mandate is to provide undergraduates with the opportunities and resources to practice. We also welcome attendees who have not yet done research, or who are looking for inspiration for a capstone/honours thesis– this is a great place to scout potential research questions and areas of interest.

CLAUSE will be on Friday, March 23rd. Call for submissions (15 minute oral presentations as well as poster submissions) will be open from February 5th – March 5th. For more information, or to submit your abstracts, go to our website: https://sites.google.com/view/clause2018

The LSA is excited to announce that applications are now available for the 2018 CoLang, the Institute on Collaborative Language Research. Applications are being accepted through February 8.

CoLang fellowships will offer several students the opportunity to participate in CoLang 2018 at no cost or at a reduced rate. Applicants must be student members of the LSA. Nonmembers may join here. Student members of the LSA will see a green “Submit Fellowship Application” button after logging in to the LSA website.

Note: Individuals affiliated with Tribal Colleges and Universities who are not LSA member may apply by clicking here. Please provide the requested information to complete a profile on the LSA website, and be sure to remember your user ID and password, which you will need to log back in. Upon completing your profile, you will see a large green “Submit Fellowship Application” button below your name. Click this button to prepare and submit your fellowship application.

The Institute on Collaborative Language Research (CoLang) will be held on the campus of the University of Florida in 2018, June 18th – July 20th. During the first two weeks (June 18-29) students will have a choice of about forty-eight workshops in all kinds of topics related to community-based language documentation and revitalization. During the following three weeks (July 2-20), three intensive practica will be offered which allow students to put the principles learned in the first two weeks into practice with detailed study of particular languages.

The institute is designed to provide an opportunity for community language activists and linguists to receive training in community-based language documentation and revitalization. The Institute has previously been convened in California, Oregon, Kansas, Texas, and Alaska and attracts a diverse range of participants from across the globe. Instructors include some of the world’s leading experts in language documentation.

CoLang 2018 is sponsored by the National Science Foundation (BCS-1664464), the Linguistic Society of America, and the University of Florida.

The Institute for Collaborative Language Research
June 18th – July 20th, 2018
Gainesville, FL
https://colang.lin.ufl.edu/

Offered as a summer institute every two years, CoLang offers a unique opportunity for undergraduate and graduate students, practicing linguists, and indigenous community members to develop and refine skills and approaches to language documentation and revitalization. The institute consists of two parts: two weeks of intensive workshops on practices, principles and models of language documentation and revitalization, followed by a three-week practicum (field methods) course, working with speakers of select indigenous languages applying hands-on techniques in language documentation. Participants may choose to enroll only in the two-weeks of workshops or in the full five weeks.

The Department of Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, is seeking a one-year appointment for one, full-time lecturer in phonology with the expectation of renewal for a second year. Duties each semester will include teaching one undergraduate and one graduate course, mentoring undergraduate and graduate students in their research, oversight of a phonology working group, responsibility for a weekly phonology reading group, and active engagement in the life of the department. Salary will be based on the University pay scale for lecturers, between $53,402–$65,064, commensurate with experience.

The Ph.D. (or equivalent degree) in Linguistics or related field is required by the start date of the appointment; all degree requirements other than the dissertation must be complete at the time of application. Applicants must be able to teach courses at all levels in phonology, including seminars in phonological theory for advanced graduate students. For those who are not U.S. citizens or permanent residents, a legal permit that allows work in the United States (such as a U.S. visa that allows employment) is required by the start date of the position. The department is unable to provide a visa/work permit for this position.

Applicants should have a broad intellectual engagement in linguistics and a research specialization in phonology. Applicants whose research interfaces with neighboring disciplines such as phonetics, morphology, syntax, or historical linguistics, are encouraged to apply, as are applicants who are engaged in fieldwork projects or employ experimental, computational, or corpus methods in their work.

The Department of Linguistics and the University of California, Berkeley, recognize and value contributions to diversity, equity, and inclusion http://diversity.berkeley.edu/. We encourage applicants to include a Statement of Contributions to Diversity to discuss how their research, teaching, service, and outreach activities contribute to enhancing diversity, equity, and inclusiveness. We welcome applications from those who have had non-traditional career paths, have achieved excellence in careers outside academia, or have taken time off for personal reasons. UC Berkeley has a number of policies and programs to support employees as they balance work and family.

Applications should include a cover letter, a curriculum vitae, a research statement, a statement of teaching experience and philosophy, and copies of representative written work (1 to 5 items may be submitted). Applications must contain evidence of teaching excellence or potential (included or summarized in the statement of teaching experience). Applicants are encouraged to submit syllabi for both an undergraduate and graduate Phonology course, previously taught or proposed. Applicants should also provide contact information for 2-5 letters of recommendation. Letters of recommendation will only be solicited for applicants under serious consideration. All letters will be treated as confidential per University of California policy and California state law. Please refer potential referees, including when letters are provided via a third party (i.e., dossier service or career center) to the UC Berkeley statement of confidentiality at http://apo.berkeley.edu/evalltr.html prior to submitting their letters. Please submit all materials electronically at https://aprecruit.berkeley.edu/apply/JPF01532. This position will remain open until filled, and applications will be accepted through January 15, 2018. A short list of candidates will be interviewed by Skype in February. Questions can be sent to Paula Floro at lingmgr@berkeley.edu.

The University of California is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, age or protected veteran status. For the complete University of California nondiscrimination and affirmative action policy see: http://policy.ucop.edu/doc/4000376/NondiscrimAffirmAct

This spring, the Linguistics Department is hosting the Cascadia Workshop in Sociolinguistics (CWSL), from April 13-14th. This conference brings together researchers working on sociolinguistic topics of interest to the Pacific Northwest, and is intended to be student-centered. I hope you will all mark your calendars and plan to attend, as it’s always exciting to see presentations of linguistic research in-person and so close to home. But more importantly, I want to encourage you to submit an abstract to present! You may have a thesis project on a sociolinguistics topic, or even a smaller project you worked on for a course. These projects don’t have to be about the PNW specifically – even collecting data from speakers in the PNW is good enough for us. Presenting at a conference is an amazing experience – it’s fun, it’s cool, and if you are planning to further your education, in any field, having a conference presentation on your CV is a big deal. So, please consider it!

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask me. Here’s the Call for Papers:

Greetings from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill! I am writing to you to ask for your assistance in letting your undergraduate majors and minors know about UNC’s master’s program in Linguistics. We offer a wide range of courses in all of the “core” areas of formal linguistics (syntax, semantics, morphology, phonetics, phonology, language acquisition and historical linguistics) as well as many additional areas including computational linguistics, writing systems, sociolinguistics, bilingualism and Mayan languages. Student funding is available on a competitive basis.

Our faculty members are well connected with other faculty in the area who work on language, both in other departments at UNC and at area universities (Duke University, North Carolina State University), and our faculty and graduate students have developed relationships with several minority language groups in the vicinity (in particular S’gaw Karen and Cherokee).

We have an active undergraduate major, and our MA and our dual degree BA/MA programs are thriving. Our MA graduates have been accepted to top tier PhD programs in linguistics around North America, such as UMass Amherst, UCLA, Stanford, Rutgers, NYU, University of Delaware, UT Austin, Indiana University, and University of British Columbia.

I would be grateful if you could forward this message and the attached flyer to any of your undergraduates who might be interested in pursuing an MA in linguistics at UNC Chapel Hill. Questions about our program may be directed to Misha Becker (mbecker@email.unc.edu), Director of Undergraduate Studies, or to me, Elliott Moreton (moreton@unc.edu), Director of Graduate Studies.

Thank you for your time!

Best wishes,
Elliott Moreton
moreton@unc.edu

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As some of you know, next semester I will be teaching LING 312 “Topics in Linguistic Analysis” (TTh 10:30-11:50). This course is “an opportunity to pursue intensive readings in specialized topics pertaining to formal linguistic theory and research methods”.

I am considering two possible topics for this course. If you are currently enrolled in LING 312, or are considering enrolling, I would very much like your input on which topic you would prefer for us to cover. Please email me at pearsonm@reed.edu to let me know your thoughts. The two possible topics are:

(1) The Structure of Austronesian Languages — A survey of the phonology, morphology, and especially syntax of languages from the Austronesian family. Austronesian is a large family which includes the languages of the Philippines, Indonesia, Micronesia, Melanesia, Polynesia, and Madagascar, along with the indigenous (non-Chinese) languages of Taiwan and some of the coastal languages of New Guinea and surrounding islands. We will read and discuss grammatical sketches and original research on Austronesian languages. Written work will consist of problem sets and/or a short research paper. In addition, each student will ‘adopt’ an Austronesian language for the duration of the course and periodically give brief presentations on features of their chosen language to the rest of the class. The course will be open to any student who has completed LING 211.
(2) The Syntax of Case and Agreement — An in-depth investigation of case and agreement systems, with a focus on formal syntactic theories of case and agreement. Topics that we will investigate include: Theories of how case and agreement are manifested in the grammar, the nature of ergativity and split-ergativity, and the relationship (or lack thereof) between morphological case and syntactic case. Students will complete a short research paper on a language or theoretical topic of their choice. Note that, although we will be reading some sophisticated primary syntax literature, students will NOT be expected to have completed LING 323 “Introductory Syntax” (we will begin the class by covering the material on case covered in that course). The course will be open to any student who has completed LING 211, LING 323, or both.

A villager from a rural community in southeastern Tibet, Yu Lha (Yi Na) is a linguistics student at Robert D. Clark Honors College, University of Oregon. Yu Lha is the author of Warming Your Hands With Moonlight, a book about the oral traditions in Siyuewu Village, where she is from. Siyuewu Village is a small farming community of about 500 in a valley near the Dadu River; Khroskyabs, the language spoken there, is an unwritten tongue and spoken only in the local area. Yu Lha dreams to preserve her people’s customs, culture, and language by creating a system to capture Khroskyabs in written form. Her passion for language resonated with her English teachers who pursued options for her to continue her education in the US.